Reading Response Guidelines
For each section you will be required to submit a 1250 word (approximately four page) paper that addresses your own interpretation of one of the readings assigned for the week. I strongly discourage referencing online sources to complete the reading responses. Responses that paraphrase interpretations or summaries found online will not receive credit and will likely be considered plagiarized, resulting in failure of the paper. In essence, there are three goals for each Reading Response: 1. Make a specific claim (thesis) about how to interpret or understand the text. 2. Support that claim with evidence from the text. 3. Write clearly. As a fourth, optional, goal, you can try to connect an event in the text with your own personal experiences. I will be very happy to provide help with responses via email. If you want me to look at drafts that can be arranged. [unique_solution]I just ask that you plan on getting any such drafts to me more than 24 hours before the due date. Responses will be graded on a hundred-point system taking into account the insightfulness of your argument, analysis of textual evidence, and clarity/conciseness of the writing (e.g. 95 will be considered excellent, 85 above average, 75 average, and down from there). Your writings must be original; repetitions and restatements of reading responses previously posted by other students will not receive credit, so make sure you read through all postings before submitting. Also, merely summarizing the assigned works is not considered a response; as in all of the writing assignments, only use plot desсrіptions, character desсrіptions, etc. as needed to support the points you make or issues you raise. See the ″Reading Response Guidelines″ on D2L for more guidelines. Responses will be due by 11:59 p.m. (EST) on the day after the completion of each section and should be submitted to the D2L drop box. (Note: the final paper will be due on the final day of the semester, which is also the day we will complete that section). All papers submitted to the Dropbox must be in either .docx, .odt, or .rtf format. Papers that are not submitted in one of these formats will be treated as zeros until the format is fixed. Papers that are emailed to me rather than placed in the Dropbox will also be treated as zeros. If you are having a legitimate problem with D2L allowing you to upload to the Dropbox and contact both me and OIT about it, I will work with you on how you submit that specific paper. If you accidentally submit the wrong file and do not correct it before the due date the paper will be considered late. Papers not submitted to the Dropbox on time will lose 5% per day. Papers more than 3 days late will not be accepted. Feel free to work ahead if you wish.